On the Forgotten Realms in 5th Edition

If you’re running the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and you’d like to know a little bit about the Forgotten Realms, I’ve been doing some of my own research on what’s changed and what you need to know about the area. This might be of interest to people that are looking to integrate their campaigns with material coming out later with a minimum of conflict.

Before I get into that, I’d like to say I’ve always had a pretty negative opinion of the Forgotten Realms. I’ve loved reading the books and found characters like Elminster Aumar and Drizzt Do’Urden cool and it puts me off the whole idea of running a campaign where its so ‘Defined’ and there are these super characters running around.

When I start a campaign, there’s so much to do. Design a calendar, work up cultures, setting, history, etc. The game materials I’ve been using have given me the actual things I need. If I didn’t have them I would need to do work to create them. The campaign and game materials don’t spend any time making things happen that I have to trip over. The map is big, areas that are interesting or historical are marked, and the rest is left as empty for me to fill. If I need to know something, I just look it up. It’s pretty nice!

It’s a pretty nice setting after maybe you kill off every super NPC dead, dead, dead.

There’s that whole “Fiction of the Forgotten Realms” thing that you can throw right out a window. Once you do that, you’ve got a pretty awesome setting. They can go anywhere, because I can just look and see what’s there! And there is plenty of room to put whatever I want there.

Here are the current cannon facts I’ve been using about the Phandlever campaign which takes place on the Northern Sword Coast. Spoilers.

Background:
4th edition, per Mike Mearls happens around 5 to 10 years before the start of 5th edition. 4th Edition “Current Year” took place in DR 1479, with the latest current year given in the books as being DR 1486 DR. Mount Hotenow erupted in 1451 DR, and Phandelver mentions it’s been 30 years from the eruption. Phandelver probably takes place in 1481 DR. I’m setting my campaign in 1486 DR. Theofficial start date for Hoard of the Dragon Queen organized play is 1489 DR.

Old Owl well and the surroundings has Orcs from the many-arrows tribe scouting hundreds of miles from their territory.

Neverwinter wood was unaffected by the mountains eruption and only Druids and Uthgardt Barbarians live there.

Helm’s Hold (not on the map, but a few miles South-East of Neverwinter) used to hold victims of the spell-plague. I can’t imagine it’s in good shape.

There’s a lot of missing information on how the realms have changed. 4e advanced the timeline 100 years and had a spell-plague that devastated the realms and changed a great many things. R. A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood made a plan to correct it called the Sundering. Here’s a quick summary of many of the changes caused by the Sundering, bringing the realms back to a 2e/3e state that is more popular with fans.

Those chosen by the gods are all over the place, because the gods are trying to get in positions of leverage before AO rewrites the tablets of fate tying everyone down in a new order.

Abeir is leaving. The world of Abeir had merged back with world of Toril during the events of 4e. This is being undone. That means Dragonborn are gone, but I imagine that there are still a few hiding somewhere. Probably also means that other areas are coming back (Maztica).

I was uncertain about the status of the Sundering and how many actual dragonborn will remain, so for now I’m disallowing Teiflings and Dragonborn (though Forgotten Realms has a long history of races with extra-planar traits). Also Dragonborn are bulls*&t.

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